There is also a video on the site, but I can't
attach it or find the URL for it--check the article.

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Emacs!

Emacs!

http://i.usatoday.net/news/_photos/2008/03/11/martialx-large.jpg
By Stephen Brashear for USA TODAY
Instructor Christian Tobler, 44, gives a German
long sword demonstration during the Academia
della Spada at Magnuson Park in Seattle, Feb 15.
Emacs!

Emacs!

By Stephen Brashear, for USA TODAY
Zhu Zhu Xizo, 23, leans on her sword while
listening to instruction during a baroque sword class in Seattle.

http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2008/03/11/martial2x-large.jpg
Martial arts take a Western turn
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
SEATTLE ? The golf cases propped up against the
walls are full of swords, daggers and the
occasional bit of chain mail. The halls of the
community center ring with the clash of steel,
the thud of shields and the quick snip-snip of
rapiers. The books quoted are as often as not in medieval German or Latin.

Welcome to a Western martial arts conference. Not
a cowboy or lariat in sight. Western in this case
is Western European, as opposed to the better-known Asian variety.

These are the arts of warf are and self-defense
of medieval and renaissance Europe. Also called
historical martial arts, they employ bare hands,
pikes, a variety of swords, daggers and rapiers
in the way that practitioners of Eastern martial
arts might use bo staves, Katana swords and Tanto knives.

Unlike in the East, these fighting traditions
died out in Europe in the 1600s with the
introduction of gunpowder-fueled weapons.

But now they're making a comeback.

At the third Western Washington Western Martial
Arts Workshop last month, more than 100 students
and masters from around the country, clad in
fencing jackets, or doublets, swirled around to
clash their backswords. Leather gloves and
vambraces (originally created for suits of armor)
protected their hands and forearms as they
practiced moves based on George Silver's
Paradoxes of Defense, first published in 1599.

"Cool. Knights!" exclaims a li! ttle boy, part of
a YMCA preschool class next door, as children
pressed their faces against the glass door to watch.

He's right. These are the knightly arts of a long-ago time.

The growing interest in European martial art
traditions comes 60 years after Eastern martial
arts gained popularity in the USA, brought home
by World War II servicemen stationed in Japan.
And today the plethora of karate, judo, tae kwon
do and kung fu studios filling America's strip
malls makes it seem as if all martial arts come from Asia.

But Western Europe has a long tradition of both
armed and unarmed combat traditions. The very
phrase "martial arts" goes back to Mars, the Roman god of war.

But the advent of guns made these centuries-old
traditions pretty much extinct by World War I,
with the exception of sports fencing. But about
20 years ago a handful of historians and
historical re-creators began to research these
fighting te chniques, painstakingly interpreting
the often flowery and confusing language of
medieval manuscripts to revive the arts.

The workshop here was held by the Academia della
Spada(Academy of the Sword), part of a burgeoning
North American network of schools teaching these long-forgotten skills.

Lure of history

Cecil Longino founded Seattle's Academia. He came
to Western martial arts in the early 1990s from
his studies as a drama major at the University of
North Florida. As he blocked out sword fights in
plays, he thought, "I'm just making this stuff up. What was it really like?"

That led him to historical fencing, which led in
turn to the Western martial arts community. While
there was interest before the early 1990s,
including a short revival in Victorian England,
things really took off with the arrival of the
Internet. What once was only a small circle of
aficionados blossomed in the past decad! e with
dozens of schools and groups springing up worldwide.

The Historical European Martial Arts Coalition
has member groups in Spain, France, Italy, the
United Kingdom, South Africa, the Netherlands,
Belgium, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Hungary and Slovenia.

Nearly 60 groups and schools are in the USA and
Canada, says Scott Baltic, editor of Western
Martial Arts Illustrated. Major schools are
located in Toronto, Eugene, Ore., Alexandria,
Va., and New York City, as well as in communities in Wisconsin and Arizona.

"It has mushroomed tremendously in the past seven
years or so," says Jeffrey Forgeng, a curator at
the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Mass.,
who has published three books on medieval and
renaissance fighting techniques. "But we're still
in the early stages. Only a fraction of the resources are available."

That could be why it's such an exciting field to
many practitioner s. Many of the medieval and
renaissance manuscripts that describe the various
schools still haven't been copied and translated
into modern tongues, much less walked through by
skilled armsmen and women to really understand their teachings.

"It's really one of these areas where amateurs
can really make a contribution," Forgeng says.

Manuscripts that had been hidden across Europe
have been scanned, posted and translated, and
fighting moves dead for 700 years suddenly are
being practiced once again. Groups such as the
Historical Fencing Translation Project collect
money to pay for professional translation of
treatises in Italian, French and Spanish, spanning 1570 to 1786.

For many, the draw is the love of history, the
desire for a good workout and the beauty of the forms.

But get one of them all sweaty after an hour
doing the intricate dance-plus-power-lunges that
is medieval swordfighting, and they'll a! dmit
that it's just "wildly cool," says Craig Johnson,
35, who studies the long sword in Kelowna, British Columbia.

"You grow up watching the movies, and suddenly
you get the chance to do it," Johnson says.
"There's a reason it's been so romanticized.
Let's be honest: A sword is cooler than a gun."

Fencing is called the martial art for incurable
romantics. Historic forms, which gave rise to
modern sport fencing, are "subtle, graceful and
elegant," says Nathan Barnett, an instructor at the Academia.

But they're not easy. The broad sword isn't
anything like the modern fencing epée used today.
It's a thing to behold. The blunt-edged swords
used in these classes often weigh 2 to 3 pounds
and are astounding examples of the blacksmith's
art. The knobs at the end of the hilts, which
counterbalance the weight, are often inlaid with
fanciful designs. The hilt is adorned with
complex decorations. And there are multiple
fullers, or grooves, g round into the sides of
the blade to help reduce the sword's overall mass.

"It's the symbol of knightly power and prowess,"
says Sean Hayes, who has taught fencing at the
University of Oregon in Eugene since 1997.

Today he specializes in I.33, called "Eye
thirty-three." It's the earliest surviving
parchment manual of swordsmanship known. Written
in Latin by an anonymous German, the illustrated
manuscript dates from about 1295. Its name comes
from its catalog number in the Tower of London.
I.33 covers the use of the medieval sword and
buckler, or small handheld shield. It was
translated into German and then into English by Forgeng in 2003.

Just as in Eastern martial arts, Western martial
arts are less about fighting and more about form
and control. A 16th-century gentleman might visit
his fencing master to work on his form each day
with very little expectation of actually engaging
in a duel. "It was about control, of yourself a!
nd your actions," Longino says.

Physical, mental workout

It also can be a serious workout. Though the
strength needed to wield the big weapons ?
broadsword, pike and dueling saber ? is obvious,
even the thin epée (dueling sword) and small
sword are physically demanding. "I'll have
students, after an hour of (using the) French
small sword, remark that they're exhausted," Longino says.

Western martial arts groups and guilds don't use
the same colored- belt hierarchy common in
Eastern martial arts. But there are similar
systems of ranking. In many guilds, or schools, a
newcomer is ranked as a novice. Tests ? written,
oral and physical ? allow students to pass to the
scholar, free scholar, provost and master stages.

At the Chicago Swordplay Guild, for example,
students wishing to prove their mettle and move
up in the rankings fight against skilled masters
invited in from other schools across North Amer ica.

Just as in Eastern martial arts, the fighting
techniques have a psychological side to them. The
mental edge comes in handy, says Victoria Dzenis,
who works in human resources in Seattle.

When someone barges into her office to launch
into a lengthy complaint about a co-worker,
Dzenis' 10 years of Italian rapier and French
foil study comes in handy, she says. Not for
skewering angry employees but in dealing with aggression.

"The thing I've learned from fencing is
self-control in the face of conflict," says
Dzenis, 37. "I can better face those situations
in my life and possibly rise above them."

And knowing that she can best a faster, bigger
and more aggressive opponent coming at her with a
sword does make her more self-confident. "I have
this sense of trust that I know what to do, and I can handle it," she says.

Not that Western martial arts are all sword and
steel. Numero! us unarmed combat traditions
include wrestling, street fighting, French savate
kickboxing and Icelandic glima, all of which tend
to get listed under the title of pugilism. In the
USA, groups such as the New Dawn Duelists Society
in Minneapolis and the Seattle Pugilism Club are
working to revive those traditions.

An ancient code

There is a strong ethical side to the current
teaching of Western martial arts, just as there
was when it was taught in the 15th century.

"People weren't walking around the streets of
Italy whipping out swords and fighting," Hayes says.

Dueling was covered by very strict laws. "A
challenge was issued by letter, it was replied to
by letter," he says. "Public notices were required, and a field was chosen."

Says Tyler Therrien, 33, of Kelowna, British
Columbia, "You think the Dark Ages. You think
it's big guys in fur coats hacking away. But it was very literate."

Jeannette Acosta-Martínez, 54, who has taught
swordplay for 10 years with her husband at the
Martínez Academy of Arms in New York, says,
"You're teaching something that is lethal. You
have to teach students that their choices have consequences."

"It's not all just kill or be killed," says
Christian Tobler, who teaches in the Liechtenauer
German school of 14th-century German
swordsmanship. "It's about protecting the weak.
The medieval chivalric code still has a lot to teach us in the modern world."

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